Holes in my Clothes

[lrhodes91]

Hi All,

I am owned by an almost 3 year old CAG. Last year was pretty tough for us both. A good bit of biting and wing plucking. I've had him since he was 9-10 weeks old. I have learned so much and still learning. This year so far is going better. He's getting up with the sun and goes to bed later. He's also on a much better diet. We also have a true avian vet, many more toys to play with, a playstand to play on, trick training and more time out of the cage. Just wanted to share many of our successes. I do have one quick question. I know it's common to have holes in your clothes with birds, but my Happy takes it to a new level. Most of my shirts are starting to get pretty worn from Happy preening me. Should I not allow him to do this? He has toys on his playstand. I try to give him wood and paper to play with and shred, but my clothes seem to be the most interesting toy for him when he is out of his cage. Please give me suggestions before I have to buy a whole new wardrobe.

Thanks so much,
Lyn

[liz]

That is called parrot clothes. We all have them. Just continue wearing the same clothes when at home. The preening is giving you attention to show his love.

[Wolf]

Hi, first thing that I would do is set aside certain clothing for bird handleing. The next thing that I would do is to start teaching him to not chew on my clothing. This would be much the same as teaching him to not bite me, so it would entail a lot of patient " not the clothes" type cue, and probably setting him on playstand when he chews them.
Getting up with the sun is good but I am not sure what you mean by going to bed later. A parrot should receive the first light of the coming dawn from the time that the sky just begins to lighten al the way through sunrise and in the evening should receive the light from the twilight period called dusk all the way through to full dark at which time they should be asleep. If they receive these lights without the interference of artificial lights then they will wake up just before sunrise in the morning and will naturally go to sleep by full dark. These two periods of light are important as it is this light that sets and tunes their internal clock.

[Pajarita]

You should see my 'parrot T-shirts', they have holes next to holes (my husband hates them and is forever complaining about my 'looking like a homeless person').

I have a jenday whose only ambition in life seemed to be to chew people's clothes into shreds. He is no longer obsessed by it and has become a 'normal' parrot (meaning he still chews my clothes but not constantly). It took over a year to break him out of the habit so don't despair if you see no improvement in a few months or so, it will take much longer than that but, if you persist, it will happen. I just told him "not the clothes" every time he did and made him fly off my shoulder to show him I was not pleased with his behavior -of course, all he did was fly off a few feet, make a U turn and come back to my shoulder to chew my clothes again so arm yourself of patience because the seemingly fruitlessness of the training can get to you and tell yourself that even if you don't see improvement, it doesn't mean it's not working - it's just a slow, slow, slow process.

The thing is that you need to allow a bit of chewing of your clothes because, as far as they are concerned, they are doing you a favor and showing their affection by doing this.

[liz]

Myrtle has remove all the buttons on my shirt and fringed the collars. I am held together with safety pins on the inside. She doesn't bother T shirts.

[lrhodes91]

That is called parrot clothes. We all have them. Just continue wearing the same clothes when at home. The preening is giving you attention to show his love.

Thanks so much, liz! I'm developing quite a wardrobe of parrot clothes! So glad to know that Happy is showing normal parrot behavior and loves me!

[lrhodes91]

Hi, first thing that I would do is set aside certain clothing for bird handleing. The next thing that I would do is to start teaching him to not chew on my clothing. This would be much the same as teaching him to not bite me, so it would entail a lot of patient " not the clothes" type cue, and probably setting him on playstand when he chews them.
Getting up with the sun is good but I am not sure what you mean by going to bed later. A parrot should receive the first light of the coming dawn from the time that the sky just begins to lighten al the way through sunrise and in the evening should receive the light from the twilight period called dusk all the way through to full dark at which time they should be asleep. If they receive these lights without the interference of artificial lights then they will wake up just before sunrise in the morning and will naturally go to sleep by full dark. These two periods of light are important as it is this light that sets and tunes their internal clock.

Wolf,
Thanks so much for your advice! I'm doing my best to give Happy a normal sun up and sun down situation. I'm so glad that all of you posted and explained this. I've read it several times. I actually started just waking him up a little earlier everyday because he plucked a bunch of downy feathers at sometime during the night. I knew that couldn't be good so I started experimenting to see if I could help him eliminate the downy feather plucking. First, I started waking him up earlier (half an hour). That didn't work so I started putting him to bed a little later and I started seeing a little less downy feathers. I kept working with the time until most downy feathers in his cup have disappeared. Then, I read on here about the solar situation. I was working on a solar situation and didn't even realize it at the time. HAHA My house is really hard to give him the perfect situation but I'm trying. My hubby is a workaholic. Leaves @ 6 or 6:30 AM everyday and hubby is not back home until 10:30 PM or 11:00 PM. The only room that will work for Happy is exposed to my husband coming home and turning lights on to see and making noises in the process. So I have put up really dark curtains where Happy is and have a white noise maching going. It is helping! I'm still seeing downy feathers on some days but it is much better.

I'm going to start trying to teach Happy that my feathers don't need preening also. Thanks so much for the suggestion!

[lrhodes91]

Myrtle has remove all the buttons on my shirt and fringed the collars. I am held together with safety pins on the inside. She doesn't bother T shirts.

Liz,

Happy adores T-shirts! Maybe I need to work on wearing different shirts. I have baby overalls. Maybe I can put those around my neck like a bib for him to preen.

[lrhodes91]

:lol: You should see my 'parrot T-shirts', they have holes next to holes (my husband hates them and is forever complaining about my 'looking like a homeless person').

I have a jenday whose only ambition in life seemed to be to chew people's clothes into shreds. He is no longer obsessed by it and has become a 'normal' parrot (meaning he still chews my clothes but not constantly). It took over a year to break him out of the habit so don't despair if you see no improvement in a few months or so, it will take much longer than that but, if you persist, it will happen. I just told him "not the clothes" every time he did and made him fly off my shoulder to show him I was not pleased with his behavior -of course, all he did was fly off a few feet, make a U turn and come back to my shoulder to chew my clothes again so arm yourself of patience because the seemingly fruitlessness of the training can get to you and tell yourself that even if you don't see improvement, it doesn't mean it's not working - it's just a slow, slow, slow process.

The thing is that you need to allow a bit of chewing of your clothes because, as far as they are concerned, they are doing you a favor and showing their affection by doing this.

Thanks so much for starting your post with Made my day!!!! Thanks so much for sharing what your bird does. Now I know Happy is showing normal parrot behavior and that he is happy and loves me! Would it be a bad idea to wear baby overalls around my neck for him to preen instead of my shirt? How exactly do you teach a bird to not preen your shirt? Thanks so much for your time!

Lyn

[Wolf]

Feather plucking can turn into a serious problem quickly, especially with a CAG, it is not something that I like to think about. One of the primary reasons that Grey's pluck is lack of adequate mental stimulation from their favored human. Most people just say boredom, but I worded this the way that I did because Grey's tend to be more obsessive about their humans than many of the other species of parrots. My Grey likes to play wrestle with me from time to time. This is not an activity that I initiate, she is the one to choose when she wants to do this and from the outside it looks like she is trying to kill my hand although she has never hurt me with it ever. So just in case that this may be part of what is happening, evaluate what you do with your Grey when the two of you are interacting together as well as the amount of time spent together. I am not thinking that this is the case here, based on your postings, but thought that I should mention it as well.
Other factors that seem to cause this type of behavior is itchy skin. I don't know how much your Grey bathes, mine is not the biggest fan of this but she gats a bath at least once a week. I use a 12 ounce spray bottle set to produce a heavy mist and let it fall like rain on her. I also use a water temperature that is just room temperature and I add 2 ounces of 100% organic, alcohol free aloe vera juice to the spray bottle. The aloe is good for them as it is an aid to digestion and it helps to soften the skin and reduce the itchies.
Food allergies can also cause a Grey to pluck, well, not just Greys, the most common ingredient in commercial feeds that birds seem to develop an allergy to seems to be soy products and for this reason I don't feed my birds anything containing soy or soy products.
Most other possible causes fall into the medical reasons realm and it takes a visit to the vet to rule them out.
thought that since this appears to be the early stages of this behavior that I would share what I have learned with you as it is best to find and eliminate the reason for this behavior as soon as you can.